Suggestions on a system of nursing for hospitals in India / [Florence Nightingale].

  • Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910.
Date:
[1865]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suggestions on a system of nursing for hospitals in India / [Florence Nightingale]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SUGGESTIONS ON A SYSTEM OF NURSING FOR HOSPITALS IN INDIA. To the Secretary of the Sanitary Commission for Bengal. Sir, In reply to your letter of November 21, 1864, requesting me to send to you any suggestions which might occur to me regarding the.organization of a system of Female Nursing in Indian Hospitals, I beg herewith to transmit a paper of suggestions which I hope may assist you in considering the subject. In order to supply the requisite number of Nurses for the Hospitals of India, you must have schools for their instruction and training, either in England or in India, or in both. For these schools there must be competent teachers to instruct and train the untaught, and if such teachers cannot at present be found in India, they must be sent from England. Unless it is assumed that the development of excellence in all that relates to nursing will be as rapid and the teaching as good in India as in England, it would be necessary to provide for a continued supply of teachers, that is, of Matrons and Head Nurses, trained at home. No one, probably, who is acquainted with European life in India will doubt that such a continuous stream of fresh blood and advanced knowledge will be necessary to prevent progressive deterioration. Then, if this be so, you will require a sort of normal school in England at which Matrons and Head Nurses may be thoroughly trained for service in India, not merely as Nurses but as teachers of nursing. A great part of the training must be conducted by the Head Nurses, even where there is a Training Matron. There does not appear to be any other practicable mode of adequately supplying what is required. Whether you train in India or not, the Government of India ought to make arrangements for the training, in England, of Matrons and Head Nurses for service in India, on such a footing as may reasonably be expected to supply annually the number required to keep up, to its full amount, the establishment of Matrons and Head Nurses, trained in Europe, which may be considered desirable. The inducements which the Government of India would no doubt be prepared to hold out, would probably attract to their service a very competent and trustworthy class of persons, more especially if it wore, as it probably ought to be, a “ covenanted service ”—- a service in wdiich employers and employed entered into a formal contract or covenant. In that case what the Government undertook to do would be fixed by regulations which the persons entering the service would engage to observe and the Government would be bound to act up to. One of the advantages of making it a regular service would be that you might then, to a limited extent, hold out a prospect of promotion, not of course by seniority but by selection for superior merit and distinguished service, in which length of service wrould be considered. This need not exclude recruiting in India, especially for the ranks. It is probable that in some parts of India persons, either born in this country or of English or Anglo-Indian parentage, and of suitable character and education, might desire to enter such a service, and some of them might rise in it. Such persons might be very useful from their knowledge of the native languages and of local circumstances of which persons arriving from England wrould necessarily be ignorant. One of the most obvious difficulties, in the wTay of carrying out any such systematic organization as is above suggested, wTould arise from the inducements to marry, W'hich 11623. A